December 09th, 2017

Spider
After living here for 16 months, we still find new insects. For those of you that do not know, I am terrified of spiders! So, I hope my friend Tambi appreciates these pictures, because I normally would not get this close to an 8 legged....umm....anything!

Caterpillar
These caterpillars sting and hurt, or so I have been told. This one curled up in a ball as I was trying to take his picture. The spiny things are hard spikes and hurt if you touch them.

Spiky curled up caterpillar

Roadwork
The road is being upgraded. The first picture shows our single lane road up to our farm. There is a ditch on each side to let the heavy rains flow down the hill. The second picture is where they have widened the road to make it fit 2 cars. It is great to drive on the new sections, but still hard to get up and down the mountain as the heavy machinery is working on the parts that only fit 1 car.

The 3rd picture is the truck that broke down on the "s-curve" section of the road. This picture was taken a day after they widened that section to move the broken truck over so that cars could safely get by it. But, more than one vehicle had a hard time getting up the hill when the drive-line was broke and it was in the middle of the road. Right now we try and schedule any trips up and down the road to either before they start work or after. Once in a while, we have to go during the day and you never know how long you will get stuck behind one of the 4 big trucks or if you have to hurry and backup really fast as the trucks finally have momentum to make it up the hill and are coming straight at you.

My Husband's Bottle Packing
Let's talk about my husband's packing ability. I offered to take the empty bottles down the hill to the store and get refills. He put the crates of empty bottles in the backseat and when I finally went down the hill to the store, they fell. I heard a big crash and the sound of glass clanking. I could not stop on the road, so I stopped at the bottom of the hill and cleaned up as much of the damage as I could. It is not fault that his truck smells now of Coke and beer. :) This picture was part of my text to him telling him he knows how steep the hill is...haha

empty glass bottles that fell in backseat

End of School Year!!!
At the end of the year, we celebrate by letting our child burn all of his school papers. We had a rather large fire that night! 

Son burning old school papers

Birds
We hear birds all day long, but we still enjoy trying to get pictures of them. Today we had the toucans eating figs.

Enjoying Farm Life
So, 16 months has gone by since we moved from the States. Panama feels like home now even though we are still navigating through new stuff all of the time.

We finally have a few pictures on the walls (my husband is putting up artwork in the first picture below) and the puppies have grown up and are just part of our family. By the way, they no longer try to eat chickens and we have collars that we can use a remote to beep them when we need them to come home. Lately they have been going down the side of the ravine to swim in the river, which makes them pretty stinky!

All in all, we are all happy, healthy and doing well.